U.S. PLANS A NEW DRIVE ON NARCOTICS

By LESLIE MAITLAND, Special to the New York Times

Published: October 9, 1982

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8—
President Reagan wants to initiate a broad program to combat the distribution of narcotics by organized crime, Administration sources said today.

The program would cost $130 million to $200 million, depending on the number of cities included, the sources said. It would require hiring 800 to 1,000 additional agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as added Federal prosecutors in the areas involved. In some places, the Coast Guard and the military would be involved.

The central feature of the program would be the stationing in certain cities of special teams of agents and prosecutors who would do nothing but pursue narcotics traffic by organized crime.

But Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Maryland Democrat who is a strong advocate of antinarcotics efforts, said today that he thought no program could work without a Cabinet-level ''drug czar'' in charge to coordinate the work of various agencies.

Administration sources said the new plan had been developed not by the White House but by the Justice and Treasury Departments. It was presented to Mr. Reagan, they said, by Attorney General William French Smith at a meeting of the Cabinet Council on Legal Policy on Sept. 25. Asked about it today, however, Associate Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani said, ''It would be premature for me to discuss it now.'' Aims to Prevent Relocation

In a radio speech Saturday, the President was apparently referring to the program when he said he would shortly announce a ''bold, confident plan'' to intensify the war on narcotics. He said it would be aimed at preventing drug traffickers from re-establishing their business in other areas whenever law enforcement shut them down.

''We're going to be waiting for them,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''We're not just going to let them go somewhere else. We're going to be on their tail.''

At another meeting of the Cabinet Council on Wednesday, sources said, the President indicated his interest in going forward with the Attorney General's plan. But the Office of Management and Budget was reported to be raising opposition because of the amount of money required.

''O.M.B. is always looking to keep the outlays down,'' Edwin L. Dale Jr., a spokesman at the budget office said today. ''But I'm not going say what our position is on this one.'' 8 to 10 Cities Chosen

Administration sources familiar with the program said it had chosen eight to 10 cities for enforcement teams, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Denver and Boston. Each city would get a team of 100 people, with the largest contingent being F.B.I. agents and with a smaller number of drug agents and about 20 prosecutors.

Customs agents would reportedly be enlisted in border areas but would not gain the investigative jurisdiction they have been seeking in recent years.

Attorney General Smith was said to have told the President that the enforcement teams would concentrate on intensive, long-range investigations of organized drug trafficking, with an emphasis on heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methaqualone and angel dust.

Other aspects of the plan include added jail space to house defendants pending trial and prison space to allow for stricter sentences in narcotics cases. The program also calls for improvements in the computer systems of the F.B.I. and the drug agency to enable investigators to track narcotics distribution rings. 'Need One Person to Call Shots'

Senator Biden, who is on the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, said today that a ''drug czar'' was needed to coordinate efforts between the Departments of State, Justice and Defense, the F.B.I., the drug agency, the Coast Guard and the Internal Revenue Service.

''We need one person to call the shots,'' Senator Biden said, adding that some success had been achieved when Vice President Bush headed a recent antidrug drive in Florida. The South Florida drive was started in February to combat the massive importation of cocaine and marijuana.

''Their commitment is minuscule in terms of dollars,'' Mr. Biden said of the Administration's antinarcotics efforts so far, and he also criticized the Carter Administration's programs.

''Illegal drug traffic in this country was estimated to exceed $80 billion, but we spend less than $3 billion for the entire criminal justice effort, for all crimes on the Federal level, and the states can't do anything about it,'' he said. F.B.I. Involved Last Year

The Administration's most significant innovation in drug enforcement was its decision last year to involve the F.B.I. in narcotics investigations. That also placed the drug agency in a position of reporting to the Justice Department through the Director of the F.B.I., who named top-ranking agents of the bureau to head the drug agency.

Associate Attorney General Giuliani said that since July 1981, when the F.B.I. took charge, it has opened more than 800 new investigations, of which 200 are being conducted jointly with the D.E.A. Records also indicate that the number of court-authorized wiretaps in drug cases have tripled in that period.

According to Sean M. McWeeney, the F.B.I. section chief in charge of combating organized crime, narcotics trafficking by organized enterprises is not restricted to the 25 ''families'' of the Mafia believed to be operating in the United States.